If Abulafia was manly, he'd be bucking to get a place on the Myrotvorets list.
But he's just a Brit poofter. 
Posted on 02/14/2024 8:56:55 AM PST by Chad C. Mulligan
What have I done to be placed on the sanctions list of the Russian Foreign Ministry, alongside several distinguished historians of eastern Europe?
My normal hunting ground (not the right word for a maritime historian) is the Mediterranean and the oceans beyond. But maybe Russia’s mandarins know that I am now writing about the Black Sea.
Since the reign of Peter the Great in the 18th century, Russia has seen the Black Sea as a vital gateway to the wider world. The Ottoman sultans blocked Russian attempts to reach warmer waters via Istanbul. Russian ships bound for intended conquests had to creak their way out of the Baltic, entering the Mediterranean at Gibraltar.
The search for Mediterranean harbours became a central theme of Russia’s foreign policy, and Putin has not lost sight of it. Witness the Russian naval base at Tartus in Syria, not far from the British Sovereign Base Areas in Cyprus.
The inclusion of historians on the latest list of people who are persona non grata reflects Putin’s certainty that he is Russia’s best historian. But is he? Much turns on the question of the origins of Russia. Was the early medieval principality of Rus a Slavonic foundation, as Putin told Tucker Carlson, or was it founded by Viking warriors?
The eminent Oxford historian Dimitri Obolensky, himself descended from the Viking prince Rurik, was happy to recognise them as Scandinavian warriors and traders who carved out territory in Ukraine and Belarus. Towards the end of the ninth century, they established themselves around a pre-existing settlement at Kyiv, making it into the capital of a principality whose rulers eventually adopted eastern Orthodox Christianity.
This created a bond with the Byzantine Empire in Constantinople that was perpetuated through the long centuries of Ottoman rule over Istanbul and the Black Sea.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Do not believe that Moscow will be satisfied with Ukraine. Control of the Bosporus is the long term goal. Think about that.
Do not believe that Ukraine was ever an "integral part of Russia". Kievan Rus' was a going concern long before Moscow even existed.
The real, provable facts of history tell a very different story.
So Russia is about to invade Turkey, because a Brit says so. Because you know, Brits are wise when it comes to Turkey, the Black Sea and Crimea.
Putin is KGB. He and historical truth do not move in the same social circles.
The same can be said of the CIA and its fellow travelers.
If Abulafia was manly, he'd be bucking to get a place on the Myrotvorets list.
But he's just a Brit poofter.
(((ZeePING!)))
Zeepers are getting fragile as reality closes in... be gentle with them.
To be added to the ZeePingList, ping me bro... we need laughter!
These zeepers and their leftist columnists. 🙄
I've thought about it - it would be nice to have Constantinople re-claimed from the Muslim Turks, and re-establish a Christian Orthodox state there.
Are you able to look into his eyes and "read his soul" like George W and McCain?
Where do neocons get such awesome superpowers?
You’re such a great American.
Your comment is tangential to my observation.
But for the lack of a warm water port...
The Dumbest Russian Voyage Nobody Talks About
https://youtu.be/yzGqp3R4Mx4?si=sOZ2428aIav9lWk8
An animated and humorous telling, eight minutes of mostly fun.
“The voyage of the Russian Baltic Fleet (Second Pacific Squadron) in the Russo-Japanese war is a tale of ridiculous blunder after blunder, a disaster from start to finish. The last ditch effort for Russian naval superiority in the Russo-Japanese war required a voyage never before taken by a coal-powered fleet. To help matters, the fleet was crewed by conscripted peasants who had little to no experience or education when it came to naval operation. Over the 18,000 mile journey, the fleet attacked civilian vessels from multiple global powers, shot at their own ships, killed fellow sailors with negligence of safety standards, destroyed city’s communication grids, and so much more. This event will go down in history as one of Russia’s most embarrassing military performances, but on the bright side, at least it gives you one fantastic hard-to-believe story to tell at your next dinner party!”
I would have the area from Serbia to Georgia be Hard Line Orthodox Christian, and Turkey for Thanksgiving dinner.
If it benefits Russia, so be it.
President Putin never said Moscow founded Ukraine. He said the opposite. He said that Kievan Rus founded Russia and they thus were the same land and culture.
This is from the Encyclopedia Britannica:
Kievan Rus, first East Slavic state. It reached its peak in the early to mid-11th century.As you see above the Vikings seized Smolensk and Kiev which had already existed.Both the origin of the Kievan state and that of the name Rus, which came to be applied to it, remain matters of debate among historians. According to the traditional account presented in The Russian Primary Chronicle, it was founded by the Viking Oleg, ruler of Novgorod from about 879. In 882 he seized Smolensk and Kiev, and the latter city, owing to its strategic location on the Dnieper River, became the capital of Kievan Rus. Extending his rule, Oleg united local Slavic and Finnish tribes, defeated the Khazars, and, in 911, arranged trade agreements with Constantinople.
Oleg’s successor, Igor, is regarded as the founder of the Rurik dynasty, but he was a less-capable ruler than Oleg, and the treaty that he concluded with Constantinople in 945 featured terms that were less favourable than those that had been obtained in 911. In his writings, Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus described trade practices in Kievan Rus at that time. During winter the Kievan princes made circuits among neighbouring tribes to collect tribute, which consisted of furs, money, and slaves. As spring came, they loaded their goods into small boats and moved them down the Dnieper in convoy to discourage attacks by nomadic steppe tribes. Their ultimate destination was Constantinople, where their rights of trading were strictly defined by treaty. Igor’s son Svyatoslav was the last of the Kievan princes to adhere to Scandinavian traditions, and with the ascent of Vladimir I (Volodymyr) in 980, the Rurik line was thoroughly Slavonized. It still preserved its connections with other parts of Europe, however, and it ruled a large territory that stretched from the northern lakes to the steppe and from the then uncertain Polish frontier to the Volga and the Caucasus.
Vladimir’s reign heralded the beginning of the golden age of Kievan Rus, but that era’s brilliance rested on an unsteady base, as the connection between the state and its subject peoples remained loose. The only link unifying the subdued tribes was the power of the grand duke of Kiev. The people paid tribute to the prince’s tax collectors, but they were otherwise left almost entirely to themselves and were thus able to preserve their traditional structures and habits. One development of enormous importance during Vladimir’s reign was his acceptance of the Orthodox Christian faith in 988. The conversion was born of a pact with Byzantine Emperor Basil II, who promised his sister’s hand in marriage in exchange for military aid and the adoption of Christianity by the Kievan state. After traditional religious practices were suppressed in Kiev and Novgorod, the Byzantine rite was propagated throughout Vladimir’s domain. Although the religion came from Constantinople, the service was in the vernacular, as the Bible had been translated into Old Church Slavonic by the missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius in the 9th century.
Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians are all descendants of Ancient Rus, which was the largest state in Europe. Slavic and other tribes across the vast territory – from Ladoga, Novgorod, and Pskov to Kiev and Chernigov – were bound together by one language (which we now refer to as Old Russian), economic ties, the rule of the princes of the Rurik dynasty, and – after the baptism of Rus – the Orthodox faith. The spiritual choice made by St. Vladimir, who was both Prince of Novgorod and Grand Prince of Kiev, still largely determines our affinity today. Later, like other European states of that time, Ancient Rus faced a decline of central rule and fragmentation. At the same time, both the nobility and the common people perceived Rus as a common territory, as their homeland.The rest after that is oppressive European powers using Russian Slavs as pawns of factionalization. I want everu Ukrainian and every Russian to take a DNA test and then after the shock of their lives, go home, shut up and stop thei stupid civil war.The fragmentation intensified after Batu Khan's devastating invasion (grandson of Genghis Khan), which ravaged many cities, including Kiev. The northeastern part of Rus fell under the control of the Golden Horde but retained limited sovereignty. The southern and western Russian lands largely became part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which – most significantly – was referred to in historical records as the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Russia.
It so happened that Moscow became the center of reunification, continuing the tradition of ancient Russian statehood. Moscow princes – the descendants of Prince Alexander Nevsky – cast off the foreign yoke and began gathering the Russian lands.In the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, other processes were unfolding. In the 14th century, Lithuania's ruling elite converted to Catholicism. In the 16th century, it signed the Union of Lublin with the Kingdom of Poland to form the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Polish Catholic nobility received considerable land holdings and privileges in the territory of Rus. In accordance with the 1596 Union of Brest, part of the western Russian Orthodox clergy submitted to the authority of the Pope. The process of Polonization and Latinization began, ousting Orthodoxy.
In its 1649 appeal to the king of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Zaporizhian Host demanded that the rights of the Russian Orthodox population be respected, that the voivode of Kiev be Russian and of Greek faith, and that the persecution of the churches of God be stopped. But the Cossacks were not heard.
Bohdan Khmelnytsky then made appeals to Moscow, which were considered by the Zemsky Sobor. On 1 October 1653, members of the supreme representative body of the Russian state decided to support their brothers in faith and take them under patronage. In January 1654, the Pereyaslav Council confirmed that decision. Subsequently, the ambassadors of Bohdan Khmelnytsky and Moscow visited dozens of cities, including Kiev, whose populations swore allegiance to the Russian tsar. Incidentally, nothing of the kind happened at the conclusion of the Union of Lublin.
In a letter to Moscow in 1654, Bohdan Khmelnytsky thanked Tsar Aleksey Mikhaylovich for taking ”the whole Zaporizhian Host and the whole Russian Orthodox world under the strong and high hand of the Tsar“. It means that, in their appeals to both the Polish king and the Russian tsar, the Cossacks referred to and defined themselves as Russian Orthodox people.
I am an ancestor of the same useless conflict here in the USA which still has repercussions in our lives today. You Chad might take that to heart.
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Don’t try to teach your grandmother how to steal sheep.
Read George Vernadsky’s history of Russia. Also “Russia and the Golden Horde” by Charles Halperin. And especially “Children of Rus” by Faith Hills. It’s not as simple as a Britannica article. Not at all.
“As you see above the Vikings seized Smolensk and Kiev which had already existed.”
In that case Putin should be delighted that the Viking countries of Norway, Sweden, and Finland are now all united in NATO, so when he starts his war with NATO, he can scoop them all up in a bunch. s/
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